In the rush of the debate this discussion piece by Gerry Holtham of the
IPPR was misplaced.
The first parts of the piece are included below.
The url to the full work is:
http://www.netnexus.org/library/papers/holtham.html
Scott Aikens
The Left's long march
by Gerry Holtham
With the intellectual and political tide running
strongly in one direction, as it has been these past
twenty years in favour of individualism and commercialism, attempts to
define a third way tend to follow a certain pattern.
When communism was thought viable, democratic socialism was the third
way. Later, many saw social democracy as the
third way. Since electorates persistently rejected social democracy, a
third way was sought between it and free market
capitalism. This was social market capitalism or, in the UK, stakeholder
capitalism. Some are now looking for the third
way between it and free-market capitalism....
This is known to the mathematicians as an asymptotic process and its
ultimate destination is clear enough.
One 'solution' is to accept the inevitability of free market capitalism
and ask whether and how a shrunken state should use
its residual powers to ameliorate the worst effects of that system. Some
- notably the right-wing think tanks - do interpret
the B lair government's mission as being exactly that.
Another approach is to go back to principles, ask what are the
fundamentals of the left wing or ex-socialist value system
and seek more actively to promote those, albeit in ways that are
consistent with an international market system. This, no
doubt, is what most members of the government would really like to do. It
can be called the third way since it is likely to
involve digging in heels against some aspects of current liberal,
individualist orthodoxy.
Beyond Left and Right?
Nonetheless, it is tempting to throw in a losing hand and claim the game
itself has changed. The third way is not a new
strategy in the old game; it is the way ahead in a totally new game,
going beyond left and right. That may be a good PR
approach but it will help clear thinking to examine whether it actually
makes sense.
People who speak of going beyond left and right often do not distinguish
between the policy positions of the left and right
in any particular historical epoch and going beyond the notions of left
and right themselves. Policies, of course, depend on
circu mstances and should always be subject to evolution and change and,
occasionally, to radical revision. The policy
positions of the left and right and the things that divide them will
change. But the notions of left and right themselves have
been around since the French revolution; they predate socialism or
collectivism of any sort - now thought to synonymous
with 'left'. I propose the following definition.
People on the left are those who, looking at any human society, with its
inevitable stratifications by power and wealth,
think things would be better if more of the power and wealth available
were redirected toward the bottom of the heap.
That does not necessarily entail any simple tax-based redistribution or
hand-outs; there are many ways to reform a system.
But the redirection of relative opportunities to the less advantaged is
the distinguishing feature of the left. Conservatives
believe that any s uch attempt to redirect opportunity, power or wealth
would make society function worse and should be
avoided. Reactionaries persuade themselves that society would function
better if more advantage were given to the
relatively well off.
Left and right, as thereby defined, are not normative terms. If economic
activity for the forseeable future is driven largely
by self interest (though utopian socialists may regret it), it is
perfectly possible for either the left or right view to be cor rect
in a given situation at any given time. Capitalism is a system that works
via self-interest. The powerful, but also the gifted
and the fortunate, tend to win at the expense of the weak, but also the
stupid, feckless or unlucky. A society that al lows
the results to become cumulative and lead to savage inequalities is one
danger but another is a system that stifles enterprise
or even self-reliance by too procrustean an attempt to redistribute the
results of economic activity.
That definition of left and right does not encapsulate all of politics.
Evidently there are many issues, such as the reform of
institutions, political freedoms, the environment, educational methods
and, perhaps, gender issues, which can divide people
on other than a left-right basis. An important instance is the issue of
communitarian values versus permissive or libertarian
ones in matters such as drugs legislation and in the framing of social
policy. It is notable, however, that the left-right distinc
tion permeates many issues that seem, at first glance, to be independent
of it. If a group is discriminated against, be it an
ethnic group or a whole sex, it comes more naturally to the left to take
up their cause as part of a scheme of change to help
t he relatively disadvantaged.
If left and right are enduring categories, why is there a current
tendency to deny them or to want to move beyond them?
Two reasons are cited; one is bad, the other good. The bad one is that
owing to 'globalization' our basic political unit, the
nation state, is now impotent to order economc activity or to affect
income distribution at all, without grave risk to general
p rosperity. There is no point in discussing something that cannot be
helped so left-right issues are irrelevant. That view,
while fashionable, is just plain wrong. There is a growing literature
about its errors and limitations.
The better reason looks to the sociology of developed societies. It holds
that while in principle the left-right distinction still
holds, societies have developed in such a way as to make any left-wing
electoral coalition impossible. The mass proletaria
t with a highly developed class consciousness has disappeared. Most
people see advancement in purely personal terms. A
successful electoral coalition must include reasonably well-to-do people
who are frightened of any talk of redistribution.
It is quite possible to argue about how great a change there has been in
popular attitudes and how tight a constraint
electoral considerations impose on schemes for redistribution but it is
difficult to deny that there has been a shift and a
constraint ex ists. How can one characterise the New Labour response?
New Labour is not monolithic - fortunately. Any reasonably lively
movement always has different strains and New Labour
is no exception. That fact has been effectively disguised by the
convenient device of contrasting 'New' and 'Old' Labour -
as if both were homogenous and any disputes were between two clearly
defined camps and so were 'external' to New
Labour. This fiction had presentational advantages for an election but a
fiction it is. Intellectual life presupposes and entails
debate, even disput e. The positions I now describe are both 'New Labour'
ones. Everyone accepts, as a premise, that the
centre of political gravity has moved to the right, owing to the
sociological changes described above.
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